He watched the movie for a while, still without internalizing much of it except for the scene in Rick’s Café when the French patriots begin singing “La Marseillaise” to drown out the Nazis’ drunken rendition of “Deutschland über Alles.” Stirring stuff that had made Colleen cry every time. Lots of things made her cry. What was that phrase from one of the other old movies she’d liked, the one set in Japan with Glenn Ford? Cry for happy, that was it. She’d cried at the drop of a hat, but mostly it had been crying for happy. It wasn’t until the goddamn cancer that she’d cried for sad, cried for scared, cried for hurt, and that he’d started crying with her.
The phone rang.
Runyon’s first thought was telemarketer. He’d had maybe half a dozen incoming calls since he’d lived here, and all but two — the two from his new employer — had been telemarketers. Invasion of privacy at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. He went over and answered it, snapping his “Hello,” ready to snap harder once the pitch began.
The voice on the other end said formally, grudgingly, “This is Joshua Fleming.
For a few seconds the words ground his mental gears, stalled his thoughts. “Well,” he said, and it sounded stupid. He cleared his throat and said, “Thanks for getting in touch.” And that sounded stupid, too.
“I’m tired of all the messages on my answering machine.” Cold and flat and tight with contained anger. Like Andrea’s voice the few times he’d tried to talk to her after the separation and divorce. The only difference was that hers had dripped loathing like acid. “Why did you have to move down here? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“I had nowhere else to go,” Runyon said.
“You could have stayed in Seattle.”
“No, I couldn’t. Not after... well, you know about my wife.”
“Yeah, I know.” That was all — no expression of sympathy. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“I think it does. You’re all I have left now.”
“Then you don’t have anything left now.”
“You’re my son, Josh.”
“My name is Joshua, not Josh.”
“All right. My son Joshua.”
“Like hell I’m your son. I stopped being your son the day you left my mother and me twenty years ago.”
“I’ve tried to make up for that. The whole time you were growing up, I tried. Your mother—”
“You put her through hell, you have no idea how much she suffered.”
“It wasn’t just me who made her suffer.”
“You didn’t know her. You never did.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“You don’t know me, either. Anything about me.”
“I want to know you.”
“Well, I don’t want to know you.”
“We need to talk, Joshua.”
“Why? There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear.”
“I’m going to say it anyway, sooner or later.”
“Fine, then go ahead, say it.”
“Not on the phone. Face to face, man to man.”
“No.”
“In a public place, if you want it that way. Lunch, dinner, drinks.”
“I don’t drink.”
Good, Runyon thought, that’s one good thing you learned growing up with her. “One meeting, one conversation. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m not a liar, son. Whatever else you think of me, believe that. I never lied to your mother. I’ll never lie to you.”
“So you say. Why should I give you the opportunity?”
“Why not? What can one meeting hurt? If you still want nothing to do with me afterward, okay, I won’t bother you anymore.”
Circuit hum. Then, “Does that include leaving San Francisco?”
“I have a job here now. City’s big enough for both of us, isn’t it?”
“It’s my city, my mother’s city, not yours.”
“I meant what I said. One meeting, straight talk, and after that the ball’s in your court.”
“... You just won t give up, will you?”
“Not before we talk.”
More humming silence. Somebody, not Joshua, said something in the background in a low whisper.
“Who was that?”
“My roommate. He thinks I should go ahead, get it over with.”
“What do you say?”
“I say you’re spoiling my holidays.”
“Not my intention. Peace for both of us, that’s all I’m after.”
“Man, that’s really profound. You’re a profound guy, aren’t you?”
“When can we meet? You name the time and place.”
No answer.
“Any day, anywhere you say.”
“Oh, Christ,” Joshua said. Then, as if he were hurling the words, “All right. All right, I’ll let you know, I’ll leave a message on your machine this time,” and the receiver went down hard on the other end.
Runyon returned to the couch. Casablanca was over; some other movie had started. He shut off the TV. Then he switched off the lamp and sat in the dark, alternately thinking and not thinking, waiting for it to be time for bed and sleep.
8
Monday was one of those dark, dreary December days — cold, light rain, low-hanging clouds. My mood was pretty upbeat in spite of the weather, but not Tamara’s; she blew in like a raincloud, wet and sullen. Uncommunicative, too. She growled unintelligibly at my “Good morning,” grumbled likewise at my offer of a cup of coffee, threw her coat at the rack — it slid off the hook to puddle on the floor, where she left it — and stomped to her desk. On went her computer; she sat there glowering at it.
“Okay,” I said, “what’d you do with her?”
Mutter that sounded like “Who?”
“New Tamara, the pleasant one. I could swear I’m looking at Old Tamara, the gloomy, irascible brat.”
Another mutter, this one with a four-letter word in it.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Definitely Old Tamara. I never did like her much.”
Silence.
I made a couple more futile efforts to jolly her out of her mood. Then I went and refilled my cup at the hotplate as an excuse to take a closer look at her. Puffy cheeks, baggage under her eyes, the whites shot through with red veins. Not New Tamara, not Old Tamara — an alarmingly different Tamara.
“You want to talk about it?” I said, serious now.
“No.”
“Something happen over the weekend? Looks like you haven’t had much sleep.”
“I’m okay,” she lied. “Don’t worry your head about me.”
“Come on, Ms. Corbin. I’m a detective, I can deduce the difference between okay and not okay.”
Mutter.
“I didn’t get that.”
“Said I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Who?”
Silence.
“Tamara, who is it you don’t want to talk about?”
She made eye contact for the first time. Her expression was more than just haggard; it was etched with pain, the mental kind. “It’s all over,” she said. “Finished, kaput.”
“What is? You don’t mean you and Horace?”
“Man wants me to marry him.”
“He what?”
“Marry his sorry ass. I moved out on Saturday.”
“I don’t get that. Moved out?”
“Staying with Claudia till I can find someplace else,” she said, and pulled a face. “Vonda doesn’t have a spare room, Lucille’s mother’s living with her now, wasn’t anybody else.”